“WESTMONT HIGH SCHOOL” The words engraved in plaster above the door drew Lily’s eye as she walked up the front steps.
Her heartbeat sounded loud as bass drums in her ears. The voices of the other students were a slow motion wave of sound both garbled and hostile. Their bodies a blur as they rushed past. Their glances foreign and invasive.
This dream scene from Cry Baby Cry actually started out as a backstory I wrote at the beginning as I was getting to know Lily better. Go read the original post HERE if you want to see what it started out as.
A hand grabbed her, some boy’s arm encased in a red and yellow letter jacket. “Hey. Who are you? You don’t belong here.”
Lily squeaked, ducked, slammed into another body. Smaller hands gripped her arms, gentler hands.
“Whoa there.”
The girl’s eyes warmed her like blue flames. The hallway had emptied out.
“Slow down, new girl,” Jean said, and smiled.
Chaos swirled to a halt and Lily could breathe again.
“Jean,” Lily said. “Jean.”
Relief swept over her.
“No, silly, it’s Bella. Remember?”
They were standing by the side of a swimming pool. Bella’s breasts pushed against the Hawaiian print blossoms of her bikini top. The cleft between them, shadowed like a chasm between snowy mountains, drew her fingers toward them.